Kevin Frisch: Getting over it’ works both ways

Thursday

Apr 23, 2009 at 12:01 AMApr 23, 2009 at 10:21 PM

If you’ve been following conservative media, or picking up on buzz words from elected Republicans, or listening to interviews from those taking part in tax-day tea parties, you’re beginning to notice something: The right is still in campaign mode.

Kevin Frisch

If you’ve been following conservative media, or picking up on buzz words from elected Republicans, or listening to interviews from those taking part in tax-day tea parties, you’re beginning to notice something: The right is still in campaign mode.

Yes, the presidential election is over and Democrat Barack Obama won, giving his party control of the White House and Congress. But no, right-of-the-aisle types haven’t stopped the made-for-media events (like those tea parties), the name calling, or, if they hold congressional office, the obstructionism. In other words, they haven’t gotten over it.

Which leads me to this: Sometimes, I scare myself (and I’m not just referring to that first-thing-in-the-morning glance in the bathroom mirror). I was once told at a company picnic that I am prescient. This led to a heated argument — I had never heard the word “prescient” and assumed it had to do with my hygiene.

The next morning, I looked the word up: The definition of prescient: “Possessing prescience.” Dictionaries like to mess with you that way. Prescience is the ability to perceive the significance of events before they occur. And in that manner, I can be scary.

What does all this have to do with the current state of politics? Just this: Democrats were a lot better at “getting over it” eight years ago than Republicans are today — despite the fact the Democratic candidate in 2000 won the popular vote by half a million ballots.

In fact, when a reader advised me after the 2000 election to “get over it” — I’m not an enrolled Democrat, but I sometimes play one in this column — I was able to show that I had done just that:

“We’ve given the new president time to get his footing,” I wrote in mid-April 2000. “Not writing one word about his administration despite the fact that since President Bush took office, on-the-job ergonomics regulations have been rescinded, U.S. funds to overseas family planning agencies have been restricted, a U.S. sub came torpedoing out of the water like ‘Jaws’ and sunk an unfortunate Japanese fishing boat, an ongoing energy crisis caused intermittent power disruptions in California, the Dow has fallen hundreds of points and NASDAQ is off roughly a thousand, several Clinton-era environmental policies have been reversed, an FBI agent was accused of spying for Russia, and the U.S. and China clashed over a mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. spy plane.

“But nary a word of criticism or complaint from these quarters. No sour grapes. No told-you-so’s. Al Gore lost (thank goodness! Who wanted to listen to four years of talk radio complaints that he ‘stole’ the election?) and we are over it.

“Now if only Republicans could practice what they preach.”

Pretty prescient, huh?

Because, this election go-around, Republicans don’t appear to be over it.

Just three months into the new Democratic administration, they have found religion on government spending, holding those tax-day demonstrations, which combined a lack of focus with a load of ugliness. (From The Associated Press: Jim Adams of Selma carried a sign that showed the president with Hitler-style hair and mustache, and said, “Sieg Heil Herr Obama.”)

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, speaking at one of the tea-bag parties, strangely raised the specter of secession — an odd talking point less than 100 days into the administration of the first black president.

“We’ve got a great union,” he told the AP. “There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”

And, of course, right-wing radio windbags have been rooting for Obama’s failure right out of the gate.

Critics of the new administration have their rights: The can talk about Hitler and secession and failure all they like. But what they’ve forfeited the right to do, the next time a Republican is elected to the White House, is tell those who didn’t vote for him to get over it.